PT 12.7.1 crash

[RamblerSound]

I'm wondering if anyone has had this particular crash.

I'm running a mac quad core 5,1 with a Native card, Sierra and PT 12.7.1

This is the second time this has happened. I booted a session at 9:00 Am. We tracked acoustic guitar from 10:40 until 12:00. We comped the guitar tracks and saved along the way. We then tracked vocals until 2:00.

I saved and closed PT. At 4:00 I rebooted PT to have it hang during the boot. I then force quit PT and rebooted the Mac. I then can boot PT. There are only two files int he session and none of the comp work.

When I look in the audio files folder on the drive there are only two audio files that I imported for ref at 9:00 AM. When I look at session backups they only appear to go to number 14 that was saved at 10:26 AM.

Everything I did today is gone. Not an audio file to be found on the ANY drive.

It's almost like the computer or finder had crashed but Protools ran fine and all the audio I was working with must have been in cashe.

Just wondering if anyone else has seen anything like this. Like I said this is the second time this has happened and it has only happened in PT 12.7 and Sierra.

Thanks for any insight,

Scott

[arche3]

Probably a drive issue. I've had this happen. Intermittent drive problem. Replaced drive. Problem solved.

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[Southsidemusic]

Check in the Audio folder where the files are saved and see if the files are there but somehow lost the linking or something.

[RamblerSound]

There are no audio files in the audio folder (except two files used as ref. imported at 9:00 AM). The other interesting thing is that the last Time Machine backup was at 9:22 AM. It's set to do one every hour. The next one is at 4:35 PM after my reboot.

There are no audio files from the recording session at all. Again it seems like the finder or the machine had some sort of freeze but PT ran on top fine.

[25ghosts]

1) What happened during Save... Did PT Throw and error ?

2) What made you reboot Protools ?

3) Try this tool "EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard" and see if you can find the files.
Perhaps they are Hidden or place in some temp folder..

If Protools went thru' with the save command with NO errors. The files HAVE to be there and if they are not then that is serious bug inside of Protools. If you are certain about your time indications you might want to check the console app and see about logs being written at that point in time. Then if you find something take appropriate actions and contact vendors.

[RamblerSound]

1) What happened during Save... Did PT Throw and error ?

2) What made you reboot Protools ?

3) Try this tool "EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard" and see if you can find the files.
Perhaps they are Hidden or place in some temp folder..

If Protools went thru' with the save command with NO errors. The files HAVE to be there and if they are not then that is serious bug inside of Protools. If you are certain about your time indications you might want to check the console app and see about logs being written at that point in time. Then if you find something take appropriate actions and contact vendors.

We simply stepped out for lunch. The machine saved with no errors and then I quit the PT application. It closed fine. I came back from lunch and booted PT and it hung during the boot. I force quit and rebooted the machine.

he fact that there are no Time Machine backups is also very strange.

I'll try your app suggestion thanks. I'll post with any news.

[RamblerSound]

The session that boots up has no comp work or anything. No new tracks that had been added during the session. It's like I never worked in this session. Time stood still at 9:30 AM.

I'm running a scan with EasyUS Data Recovery.

This is VERY strange.

[25ghosts]

Do you have any automatic Session BU files sitting somewhere you could try. A long time ago I had opened a backup session after a crash and forgotten I had it open and kept saving that. then When opening the "Real" project it was hours back because I had save tot he Backup instead of that...

At least in all my years of PT I have NOT heard about the issue you are mentioning. Quite the Horror Trip my friend. Not just one day's worth of work lost but also the insecurity of it happening again...

Have you encountered ANY odd behavior of the disk in general - Sounds, or oddity in general ?

If so - you might wanna look at it and have it checked. System Drive ? or external drive ?

Also if you force quit Protools it HAS to have a log somewhere and that could be vital to figuring out what happened.

[RamblerSound]

Do you have any automatic Session BU files sitting somewhere you could try. A long time ago I had opened a backup session after a crash and forgotten I had it open and kept saving that. then When opening the "Real" project it was hours back because I had save tot he Backup instead of that...

At least in all my years of PT I have NOT heard about the issue you are mentioning. Quite the Horror Trip my friend. Not just one day's worth of work lost but also the insecurity of it happening again...

Have you encountered ANY odd behavior of the disk in general - Sounds, or oddity in general ?

If so - you might wanna look at it and have it checked. System Drive ? or external drive ?

Also if you force quit Protools it HAS to have a log somewhere and that could be vital to figuring out what happened.

I know! This is really nuts. Everything worked perfect. No crashes or anything that might make me suspect any problem. I also have been using PT for decades and never do I worry about an audio file not being on the drive. NEVER!

This happened one other time and the similar thing was the hang on booting up.

Its strange to see the backup sessions and that there is only 14 total and they stop at 10:26. The time machine backups stopped right before that. The only audio files that exist in the session had been imported before 10:30. It's like the machine stopped keeping track of anything after 10:30 Am. I'm guessing all the playback and editing we did was being handled in cashe otherwise I don't know how we could have performed work that didn't get saved in any way.

I'm still letting the recovery software work but I'm not feeling too hopeful.

Thanks for our help,

Scott

[arche3]

It's an intermittent drive. Trust me. I went through thebexaxt same thing. Tomorrow the files might be there. Then the next day they will be gone. This can happen in any session. At that's still on the drive. You can run disk warrior etc... It will say drive ok. Then the next time you do it will say corrupted directory.

Get a new recording drive.

What I did after I figured out it was sporadic was wait for a day the files were actually there. Then moved it over to new drive.

The next day some files were missing again. [emoji3]

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[RamblerSound]

It's an intermittent drive. Trust me. I went through thebexaxt same thing. Tomorrow the files might be there. Then the next day they will be gone. This can happen in any session. At that's still on the drive. You can run disk warrior etc... It will say drive ok. Then the next time you do it will say corrupted directory.

Get a new recording drive.

What I did after I figured out it was sporadic was wait for a day the files were actually there. Then moved it over to new drive.

The next day some files were missing again. [emoji3]

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But the session file and the session backup files are on the main drive. This is not that the files are not linking and I have a session with greyed out files. It's like 4 hours of work never happened on any drive. I do trust you but I don't know if we are talking abut the same thing.

Thank you for your input. I do appreciate it.

[Darryl Ramm]

Do you have disk cache enabled?

Check the console logs for system errors or warnings (Console.app)

Verify the file system using the disk utility (luckily we have a much more robust file system than HFS+ coming soon....).

Do a Terminal find command for every file newer than the date of the few files you do have and let it scan all drives (e.g. specify / as the starting directory). Just see if it turns up anything. type "man find" into the terminal to see how to use it, or ask here if stuck.

I would be careful trusting that disk or the session file for future work.






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[arche3]

But the session file and the session backup files are on the main drive. This is not that the files are not linking and I have a session with greyed out files. It's like 4 hours of work never happened on any drive. I do trust you but I don't know if we are talking abut the same thing.

Thank you for your input. I do appreciate it.
I know. I had "the exact same thing " exactly how you describe it. Substitute your name for mine. Exactly the same.

It happened to me 3x. Over months. It is because the physical drive is about to go. There is bad sectors on the drive platter that is being written onto.

Unless you are using ssd recording drive then it s not exact. It happens to me using FireWire spinning drives. Long time ago.



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[RamblerSound]

Do you have disk cache enabled?

Check the console logs for system errors or warnings (Console.app)

Verify the file system using the disk utility (luckily we have a much more robust file system than HFS+ coming soon....).

Do a Terminal find command for every file newer than the date of the few files you do have and let it scan all drives (e.g. specify / as the starting directory). Just see if it turns up anything. type "man find" into the terminal to see how to use it, or ask here if stuck.

I would be careful trusting that disk or the session file for future work.

Interesting. I don't know exactly what I'm looking at but the console log has activity every few minutes. It looks like 4 minute intervals. Sometimes its more active with more logs. There is no log activity after 10:34 AM until 2:05 PM when I shut PT down. Then 3:47 PM I see what must be my attempt to boot PT, 3:50 my force quit, and then at 3:53 PM my successful boot and then log activity continues at a rapid pace up to the current time.

Crazy?








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[RamblerSound]

Interesting. I don't know exactly what I'm looking at but the console log has activity every few minutes. It looks like 4 minute intervals. Sometimes its more active with more logs. There is no log activity after 10:34 AM until 2:05 PM when I shut PT down. Then 3:47 PM I see what must be my attempt to boot PT, 3:50 my force quit, and then at 3:53 PM my successful boot and then log activity continues at a rapid pace up to the current time.

Crazy?

[Darryl Ramm]

What log file is that in?


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[RamblerSound]

1) What happened during Save... Did PT Throw and error ?

2) What made you reboot Protools ?

3) Try this tool "EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard" and see if you can find the files.
Perhaps they are Hidden or place in some temp folder..

If Protools went thru' with the save command with NO errors. The files HAVE to be there and if they are not then that is serious bug inside of Protools. If you are certain about your time indications you might want to check the console app and see about logs being written at that point in time. Then if you find something take appropriate actions and contact vendors.

I'm recovering files now. I don't know if I have the files tracked today but I did hear some of the files from the previous crash.

Thanks for the tip. I'll keep you posted.

Scott

[RamblerSound]

I know. I had "the exact same thing " exactly how you describe it. Substitute your name for mine. Exactly the same.

It happened to me 3x. Over months. It is because the physical drive is about to go. There is bad sectors on the drive platter that is being written onto.

Unless you are using ssd recording drive then it s not exact. It happens to me using FireWire spinning drives. Long time ago.



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Got it. I forgot that the session file is also on the audio drive. It is a 1T spinning drive. I'm trying to recover stuff now. Thanks for the info.

Scott

[RamblerSound]

I'm recovering files now. I don't know if I have the files tracked today but I did hear some of the files from the previous crash.

Thanks for the tip. I'll keep you posted.

Scott

It recovered some files but nothing that I did today. I'm stunned that we could do so much work and not have a trace of evidence that we did it.

Thanks for your input,

Scott

[RamblerSound]

What log file is that in?


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The console log. The All Messages section.

[xylie6]

As the others are saying, this sounds like a classic case of a spinning hard drive telling you that it's dying. Its's funny how we almost never listen, and are actually surprised when it does fail entirely. Many argue that the cost of SSD drives is to the point now that its almost a no-brainer to get one installed. Please follow up on this important post, to let others know the outcome. Hope the file recovery tools help you get some work back.

[RamblerSound]

As the others are saying, this sounds like a classic case of a spinning hard drive telling you that it's dying. Its's funny how we almost never listen, and are actually surprised when it does fail entirely. Many argue that the cost of SSD drives is to the point now that its almost a no-brainer to get one installed. Please follow up on this important post, to let others know the outcome. Hope the file recovery tools help you get some work back.

I'm going to order a new drive today. I guess I just don't understand all of the other systems stopping at the same time. I should have session backup files and a time machine backup every hour. It's strange to look at the logs and the session files I do have and see that the machine stopped doing it's basic functions around 10:32 AM.

Hopefully it is just the drive as you mention they are not all that expensive any longer. I will get it swapped out and report back.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in to help. Much appreciated,

Scott

[25ghosts]

I'm going to order a new drive today. I guess I just don't understand all of the other systems stopping at the same time. I should have session backup files and a time machine backup every hour. It's strange to look at the logs and the session files I do have and see that the machine stopped doing it's basic functions around 10:32 AM.

Hopefully it is just the drive as you mention they are not all that expensive any longer. I will get it swapped out and report back.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in to help. Much appreciated,

Scott
There are drive monitoring tools that will tell u a mile away if the will fail. I use something which has become as normal to me as OS X. Softraid. Amazing software that has always warned me about failing drives. You could try their 30 day demo and see if they report something ;) Their reports are are much more in depth and depend on a lot more vast factors way beyond SMART.

[Darryl Ramm]

It may be impossible to tell. It might well be a OS X or Pro Tools software problem. In the system.log look around the time of the problem and look at the next messages from when the computer rebooted. I expect if the disk problems you will see a bunch of messages about that on the reboot. It may be worth doing a full clean OS X and Pro Tools install to the new drive and try to remove several possible causes at once.


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[RamblerSound]

All right crew, if I buy a replacement drive should I go SSD? 1T spinner is $50. That is what I have and it's worked great for 6 years (until yesterday).

I remember the argument that SSD would not be good for a media drive. Has that philosophy changed or have the drives advanced past that old thinking?

Thanks for any input,

Scott

[Darryl Ramm]

That would be a confused/wrong argument. Samsung 850 Pro or Evo. Avoid the smallest sizes.



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[RamblerSound]

That would be a confused/wrong argument. Samsung 850 Pro or Evo. Avoid the smallest sizes.



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Great! I'll start looking into it. This is going into a 5,1 Mac Pro tower. Still the same suggestions in brand and model?

Thanks again for your input,

Scott

[Darryl Ramm]

Yes....

But the long answer is Yes if you want to go for a SATA SSD.

And then if you want more performance install a SATA III (6Gbps) PCIe controller card in the Mac because the motherboard SATA is only SATA II (3Gbps).

But if you really want maximum performance go with M.2 SSD drives installed on PCIe cards. Like Samsung SM 951.... much faster but more work.

Probably best to err on the side of simplicity. Install a Samsung 950 Pro or Evo drive connected to the motherboard SATA II and get everything working then you can install a SATA III card later.


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[25ghosts]

@RamblerSound,

this just popped into my mind....

You are NOT using iCloud Drive by any change ?

If ANY of you are. Make sure that "Optimize Mac Storage" is turned off inside iCloud Drive Options -> Documents.

If it is NOT - well - when macOS Sierra - SingleHandedly Decides that it should, if WILL delete any files it sees fit from either your Desktop or Documents Folder and store that ONLY in iCloud.

It will Optimize-Away your Files !

Just a thought !

[RamblerSound]

@RamblerSound,

this just popped into my mind....

You are NOT using iCloud Drive by any change ?

If ANY of you are. Make sure that "Optimize Mac Storage" is turned off inside iCloud Drive Options -> Documents.

If it is NOT - well - when macOS Sierra - SingleHandedly Decides that it should, if WILL delete any files it sees fit from either your Desktop or Documents Folder and store that ONLY in iCloud.

It will Optimize-Away your Files !

Just a thought !

I will check into this. I don't think I am but this is a fantastic thought. I will post back if I find anything interesting.

Thanks for giving this some thought. I really appreciate it,

Scott

[RamblerSound]

@RamblerSound,

this just popped into my mind....

You are NOT using iCloud Drive by any change ?

If ANY of you are. Make sure that "Optimize Mac Storage" is turned off inside iCloud Drive Options -> Documents.

If it is NOT - well - when macOS Sierra - SingleHandedly Decides that it should, if WILL delete any files it sees fit from either your Desktop or Documents Folder and store that ONLY in iCloud.

It will Optimize-Away your Files !

Just a thought !

I just had time to check into this. "Optimize Mac Storage" was selected. I just deselected the check box.

It seems like my files would be there (iCloud drive) but no go. It sure seems like this could be a likely culprit. I did buy a new drive because I appreciate the input of the board members here so much. The machine is performing so great with no other problems.

I will install the new SSD drive in bay 4 but I think I will also keep the 1T spinner in there and monitor it as well to see if it is OK.

Thanks everybody,

Scott

[stanonbass]

I had the exact same issue awhile back on protools 11 and mavericks. I was using a hackintosh though.

Protools would lock and I would have to reboot. Id lose 2 hours of files. They would vanish off the hard drive. It was not a hard drive issue. I switched to Windows after that and the problem went away. Some weird mac protools thing maybe.